266 Wild Life in a Southern County 



not know that the cuckoo is not of its order is past credit. 

 The robin is much too intelligent. Why, then, does ho 

 feed the intruder ? There is something here approaching 

 to the sentiment of humanity, as we should call it, towards 

 the fellow-creature. 



The cuckoo remained in the cage for some time after 

 it had attained sufficient size to shift for itself, but the 

 robins did not desert it : they clearly understood that while 

 thus confined it had no power of obtaining food and must 

 starve. Unfortunately, a cat at last discovered the cuckoo, 

 which was found on the ground dead but not eaten. The 

 robins came to the spot afterwards — not with food, but as 

 if they missed their charge. 



The easy explanation of a blind instinct is not satis- 

 factory to me. On the other hand, the doctrine of here- 

 dity hardly explains the facts, because how few birds' 

 ancestors can have had experience in cuckoo-rearing ? 

 There is no analogy with the cases of goats and other 

 animals suckling strange species ; because in those instances 

 there is the motive — at all events in the beginning — of 

 relief from the painful pressure of the milk. But the 

 robins had no such interested motive : all their interests 

 were to get rid of their visitor. May we not suppose, 

 then, that what was begun through the operation of here- 

 ditary instinct, i.e. the feeding of the cuckoo, while still 

 small and before the young robins had been ejected, was 

 continued from an affection that gradually grew up for the 

 helpless intruder ? Higher sentiments than those usually 

 attributed to the birds and beasts of the field may, I think, 

 be traced in some of their actions. 



To the number of those birds whose call is more or less 

 apparently ventriloquial the partridge may be added ; for 

 when they are assembling in the evening at the roosting- 



